In the build-up to Euro 2025, The i Paper spoke to her players, colleagues and Wiegman herself to build a picture of the Lionesses boss as she attempts to reach a fifth successive major tournament final.
For all Wiegman’s reputation as a strict disciplinarian, it is not entirely accurate. Her players have heard her sing karaoke. In addition to intense, professional training sessions, camp can also be light-hearted, with table tennis competitions, bracelet making and graffiti art.
“She doesn’t like to lose. She wants to do things the right way. She’s a good person, so as a player you want to respect the person that you play for, which we do. And you want somebody that’s going to push you and challenge you.”
Wiegman celebrates the Euro 2022 final with Mead (Photo: Getty)
But another first meeting would illustrate how she would go about transforming the culture of the dressing room. Beth Mead’s handling by Wiegman’s predecessor, the interim manager Hege Riise, had caused bewilderment.
The new boss was then taken on a tour of St George’s Park, the FA’s state-of-the-art Staffordshire base. Unwisely, the Sir Bobby Charlton pitch was introduced to her as “the men’s pitch”. She immediately insisted the senior women’s team should be allowed to play on it too.
The pink cloud
“She’s got that winning mentality, in 2022 [before the Euros] that’s what we needed, someone to come in and have that track record of winning. She had that and she was able to galvanise the group to go on and win.”
“We were eighth in the world when she took charge in September 2021 and we have not been outside of the top five since winning the Euros.”
Wiegman at the 2023 World Cup (Photo: Getty)After putting five past her native Netherlands, she told the squad to stay “grounded”. “Whether we lose or win now, we’re not going to all of a sudden sit, we call it, on a pink cloud.”
That is partly why the FA were wiling to wait months for her to officially take over. She had taken the women’s game to new heights with the Netherlands or Leuuwinnen – her former side were also nicknamed the Lionesses.
Just like in England, women’s football had been banned until the 1970s – Wiegman was born in 1969. The starkest change when she got to the UK, though, was that she found football was not only popular, but a national obsession. “In every part of the country, you have people that really support one club,” she grins. “And it’s just their life.”
The Netherlands won Euro 2017 (Photo: Getty)In 2017, the generation of Dutch stars that lifted the Euros – Vivianne Miedema, Lieke Martens, Jackie Groenen and Danielle van de Donk – were far less established. It was Wiegman who put them on the world stage. Women’s football went from a niche sport to a household staple. Links Rechts became the song of the summer as armies in orange bobbed left and right up and down the cities.
The glory years
By winning Euro 2022, Wiegman managed something no England manager had done since 1966. At full-time, in the glow of the Wembley sun, she ran backwards onto the pitch and kissed the bracelet belonging to her sister, who had passed away shortly before the tournament began.
A hallmark of England’s 2022 campaign, and the 2023 Finalissima and World Cup that followed, was her team huddles. The message, Jess Carter says, is always about “sticking together”, win or lose.
Wiegman leads the team huddle (Photo: Getty)
The 2023 World Cup felt more intense, on the other side of the world and with fewer freedoms for players to escape the bubble. She would allow them to walk the beaches of Terrigal, New South Wales but the message was always clear – they were there to win, not to go on holiday.
That summer in Australia was the last time England felt fully settled. Later that year, they failed to qualify for the Olympics on behalf of Team GB. They suffered chastening defeats in the Nations League.
Much has been made of the “crisis” that unfolded weeks before Euro 2025, when Earps and Kirby retired and Millie Bright pulled out. The reception when Earps told her manager she was bowing out was frosty.
She also learned a key lesson in 2022. Back then, players who didn’t make the Euros squad still had to remain in camp. Later, she conceded that was a mistake. So when Kirby told her she wanted to retire, the Brighton forward says she was offered the chance to go home.
“The last training sessions, she tried to give me some good feedback from training,” Kirby says.
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In fact it is the part of the job Wiegman least enjoys. “I am actually very caring and that’s often not very helpful in this job,” she says.
There are now fewer rules in training too, hoping players will apply their “common sense”. And it is a different breed of player Wiegman is managing now. Most of her 2022 winners had previous jobs – in Domino’s, fish and chip shops, accountancy firms. Now they come through elite academies.
What’s next?
Soon, that prediction will come true again. Her long-term assistant Arjan Veurink will take the Netherlands job after the Euros, and she will be without the man she has relied on for fitness training, video work and as a general ear.
“I’ve become a little bit older too, with more experience in football and life,” she surmises.
The ultimate question is how she can reinvent herself – and her team – yet again.
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